Hey everybody! Transformers 5 comes out this week! It's gonna earn the better part of, if not more than, a billion dollars!

Do we... do we care? I kind of want to care, but I can't seem to do so. I think that my expectation is that it'll be three hours of McGuffin chasing to stop the end of the world while we learn that the Transformers have secretly been intertwined with human history... just like the last four movies.

But as much as I'd like to see a different creative take on the live action stuff, they're not going to rock the boat while these things make a billion dollars each. Ho hum.

I'm definitely up for another two and a half hours of massive spectacle and huge explosions and increasingly ludicrous inattention to continuity.

Not even joking. Rewatched the first three yesterday and Marky Mark Meets the Dinobots tonight (not actually seen that one since the cinema) and time/distance has made them nowhere near as annoying as I expected.

Yeah, I mean the big silly tentpole stuff is fine for what it is. It's just that... I dunno. With at least the first couple, I was intrigued with what they were going to do them, how certain characters would be adapted to film, and so on. For example, Hot Rod is supposedly one of the robots in this one, but I know from experience that that means very little by itself. It might be like Hot Rod, or it might just be a robot that's named Hot Rod that's in the background of a couple of scenes. So... the anticipatory magic is gone. For me, at least.

I'm looking forward to seeing where the "Prime goes into space to confront his creators" plot goes (seriously, I didn't even remember Age of Extinction ending with a sequel set-up).

As far as Hot Rod goes, I don't even bother learning the names of the Autobots. Do they have names? Have any of them had names? I remember one of them was called Ironhide and that Jazz got ripped in half in the first one. Beyond that, it's a shrug. Prime, Bumblebee and a random cast of jobbers has been the theme so far, and I'd expect that to continue.

I suppose I should be excited for this, but no, not really. The toys are simultaneously mostly awful, overpriced by $10 compared to every other line and pushing out the Titans Return stuff I actually like. And the movie itself is going to be an hour or more longer than it should be, full of characters that are either completely flat or annoying attempts at comic relief, with a plot that will be vaguely incoherent at best.

I'm sure I'll see it at some point, maybe even in theatres, but unless it gets really good reviews I honestly don't care very much about when or how.

As far as Hot Rod goes, I don't even bother learning the names of the Autobots. Do they have names? Have any of them had names? I remember one of them was called Ironhide and that Jazz got ripped in half in the first one. Beyond that, it's a shrug. Prime, Bumblebee and a random cast of jobbers has been the theme so far, and I'd expect that to continue.

's what I mean. For the first couple of movies, I remember being excited for [character] being rumored to show up, but experience has shown that the films (rightly) just do their own thing without worrying about previous entries. But the part of me that came to watch them with all the baggage of seeing previous iterations of the brand knows to not get too bothered. So what's left to get excited about is... big explosion summer tentpole feature.

Anyone care to offer some non-spoilerish commentary on the new movie? I have done my best to keep away from most of the trailers, toy pics, and tv spots. I've noticed a recent trend that the frequency and amount of promotion for a new movie is directly proportional to the suckiness of the same. Lots of trailers/tv.spots/ads = lots of suckiness in the movie.

I enjoyed it, personally. I don't expect great things from the LAM and enjoy them for what they are - dumb fun with some really, really good CGI stuff - and direction, in fairness. This does feel to me like the best one since the first. Its long, sure, but there seems to be enough plot and story going on to fill the run time - even if a lot of that ends up going nowhere. The comedy feels less grindingly awful than usual and the human cast all feel fairly natural and there's no offensive stereotypes and the leering at women is toned down. The Autobots are the same set of bell-ends from AOE, but Hot Rod is good fun and has an interesting weapon at his disposal and I liked the Decepticons, despite them all being named by a five year old. Megatron is, as usual, pretty redundant throughout, but at least he looks good this time. Anthony Hopkins is great and whilst having yet another mysterious secret history is stretching things, I like that there's an effort to pull everything that's happened previously together. Enough so I hope Bay at least sticks around for a sixth to round out this set of 3 films and their world building.

Anyone care to offer some non-spoilerish commentary on the new movie? I have done my best to keep away from most of the trailers, toy pics, and tv spots. I've noticed a recent trend that the frequency and amount of promotion for a new movie is directly proportional to the suckiness of the same. Lots of trailers/tv.spots/ads = lots of suckiness in the movie.

I won't be surprised if this movie really does suck.

It's not good. It's the same magaffin chase while learning the secret, intertwined history of the humans and transformers again, but written by committee. I found myself bored more than anything else.

If you liked the previous TF films then this one is more of the same. Well-made (it looks and sounds lovely) and full of action, but ultimately pretty dumb and one-note.

What I would say is that the stakes are a little higher this time (it certainly feels a little more epic than previous installments), and the stupid humour is toned down a notch. There are some silly moments here (Mark Wahlberg and Laura Haddock searching a room for a clue is played for laughs, plus every scene with John Turturro), but there's nothing OTT here in the same vein as twitchy Sam with his Decepticon watch, Sam's mother eating hash brownies, the robo-scrotum, or Wheelie humping Megan Fox's leg.

It's a disaster. It's a nightmare. I had a feeling it would be awful and so went to see it in regular format during the day instead of dropping $40 on the 3D IMAX version with my lady friend. It's a horrible, horrible movie, the worst of the five by a comfortable margin.

It was awful. As if it were written to prove Merlin's existence, that dragons are real, make Pangea factual, and finally to explain Stonehenge. Everything else was filler to put those pieces together. Ugh. Worst.

Makes me wish we could rewind to TF:4 and have Lockdown (who I still believe was the best TF villain) escape near the end, have Prime and the others begin pursuit. Then open TF:5 with Quintessa, who rules from Unicron; she captures Prime with the help of Lockdown. Rather than changing Prime, she makes another one like him (Nemesis Prime). They could all battle it out in space and leave the human folklore out...